Poseidon's Wake - Страница 103

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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Aboard Mposi they had seen the pause in the other ship’s progress and the temporary quenching of its Chibesa signature. At first they drew some encouragement from that, hoping that it might signal a change of heart on Dakota’s behalf — perhaps even a technical fault that would force her to abandon the mission. But closer examination showed the presence of a Watchkeeper, a dark-shuttered lantern a thousand times larger than Kanu’s tiny spacecraft. They watched it shark in close and stop with an insolent suddenness. It held station for an hour or two, then veered off at high acceleration. Not long after the Watchkeeper departed, the Chibesa signature resumed.

They had lost a little time, but nothing that made any difference in the larger scheme.

‘Eunice?’ Vasin asked, as if she had all the answers.

But Eunice had nothing to offer. ‘You know as much as I do. If the Watchkeepers didn’t think that expedition of hers was a good idea, they’d have stomped down on it.’

Soon there was an incoming transmission from Kanu.

They crowded around to watch it, letting it play without interruption. Now that she had spent time in the man’s presence, Goma felt she had some measure of Kanu as an individual — some sense of when he was speaking frankly, and when he was being held back from absolute candour.

Now she had no doubt that he was speaking freely.

They were to turn around, Kanu said. They were to turn around and restore full power to Zanzibar, and if they did not do so there would be immediate and irrevocable consequences.

‘She has no weapon that can touch you,’ Kanu explained, ‘just as you have no real weapon that can hurt her — and no, the mirrors don’t count. But ask Eunice about the Friends, about the survivors in the skipover vaults. Dakota has already convinced us that she’ll harm the Friends if we don’t cooperate with her, and that’s argument enough for me. Now she’s extending the same terms of engagement to you. If you don’t turn around, the Friends will die.’

The distance between Mposi and Icebreaker — they now knew the name of Kanu’s ship — had closed to less than one light-minute now. On that basis, Kanu demanded a response to his request within three clock minutes. Both ships were fully capable of tracking the other’s movements and exhaust energies — there was no possibility of subterfuge.

‘Sounds like brinkmanship to me,’ Vasin said.

‘Whatever it sounds like,’ Eunice replied, ‘he’s telling the truth about the sleepers in the skipover vaults. They exist.’

‘You mean,’ Ru said, ‘they existed the last time you had any hard evidence.’

Eunice gave a gracious nod. ‘That’s true, and I can’t prove that the Friends are still on Zanzibar. But they were always a potentially useful resource to her, even if only as a human shield. Provided she had the power to keep them viable, I think she’d have done so. Besides, there is another reason to believe they’re still alive.’

Ru folded her arms. ‘Which would be?’

‘Atonement. A great crime took place aboard Zanzibar. Don’t think that hasn’t left its mark on Dakota — there’s a part of her that still feels, still suffers remorse.’

‘You’re that good a judge of her character, after all this time?’ Vasin asked.

‘I know elephants. The past isn’t the past to them.’

‘Then she’s kept the Friends alive out of a sense of guilt, is that what you’re saying?’ asked Goma.

‘Not guilt, precisely, more out of a deep desire to undo what was already done — to balance out a wrongness with a greater good. But that doesn’t mean she won’t harm the Friends if she feels there’s no other alternative.’

‘How might she do it?’ Vasin asked.

‘A hundred ways. The simplest? Turn off their power. Left to warm too quickly, they’ll come back to us as so much neural porridge. Trust me. I’ve had some experience with this.’

‘You were warmed too quickly,’ Goma said, remembering one thread of Eunice’s ancient history. ‘But they found your body in time to recover some patterns from your head.’

‘They may as well have read chai-leaves. I don’t think Chiku brought back anywhere near as much of me as she imagined. But she meant well by it. It encouraged me to be more than I was.’

‘So where does this leave us?’ asked Vasin.

‘Your choice, Captain,’ Eunice said. ‘Take Kanu at his word and turn around or press ahead if you think this really is brinkmanship.’

‘What would you do?’

‘I can’t say I’ve ever been one for turning.’

If there was an argument to be mustered against Vasin, Goma was not going to be the one who took a stand. She could see the case for turning around — that to press on further was to risk retaliatory action against the Friends. But equally they had come this far with the intention of dissuading Dakota, not of giving in at the first setback.

She felt uneasy about it — as if she was allowing herself to be swept along by a rising tide of belligerence. But abandoning the pursuit felt no more desirable.

‘I meant to salute your courage,’ Grave said, during a quiet moment while they were waiting to see how Dakota would respond to their refusal to turn back. ‘After what happened to Mposi, it was not an easy thing to submit to the nanomachinery.’

Goma thought back to the horror of that moment, the imminent terror of drowning, the cool, calm force of Eunice restraining her under the surface of that lung-filling fluid.

Goma dredged up some false bravado. ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’

‘It’s what you feared beforehand that matters. I can’t say I knew him as well as you did, but I believe he would have been suitably proud. I just wish your negotiations had brought us to a more positive state of affairs.’

‘So do I.’

‘Our captain appears to be moving towards an acceptance of force as the only solution.’

Goma answered wearily, ‘If you have a better idea, please raise it. We’ve argued with them and reasoned with them. It’s made no difference.’

‘Mposi would not have been so defeatist.’

‘You’re right — you didn’t know him as well as I did.’

‘I just think we’re rushing into something we will not be able to undo. Gandhari will try to use the mirrors in an offensive capacity; Dakota will deliver on her promise to harm the Friends. And what will have been gained by either party except a deepening of our estrangement?’

‘I get all that, Peter. I just don’t see an alternative.’

‘We could have demonstrated our good intentions by backing off.’

‘And allowed Dakota a free run at Poseidon?’

‘An even freer run,’ Grave corrected, without any censure. ‘In one sense, our chase is completely futile. She will get there ahead of us no matter what we do, so what is to be gained by pursuing this course of action?’

‘We can’t just let her do what she wants.’

‘But since we cannot prevent her, what are we hoping to achieve? A show of defiance?’

‘Anything could happen once they approach those moons. They’ll need to slow down drastically. If they run into trouble or have a malfunction, the tables might be turned.’

He smiled. ‘Might.’

‘It’s all we’ve got, Peter. You have your faith, and this is mine — that a long shot is better than no shot at all. And you forget, Dakota is a Tantor — no matter what she thinks of herself, what she’s become, that makes her something marvellous to me. I want to know her mind. I want to protect it like a jewel. Nothing so precious should ever fade from the universe again.’

‘From what I’ve seen, she looks like a monster to me.’

‘Even monsters are beautiful,’ Goma said.

Dakota delivered her answer via Kanu. His face, familiar to them all now, bore the stress of recent events. Nissa, his former wife, looked on from the background, her expression no more settled than Kanu’s.

‘Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Dakota has sent a command back to Zanzibar to begin selective thawing of one hundred of the Friends. You know what this means. They’ll be raised from skipover too quickly and suffer irreversible damage to their detailed brain structure. The process will take a few hours and you’ll have no independent confirmation of it until the work is done, but I’ve spent enough time with Dakota not to doubt her conviction. The thawing has commenced. You can still turn around, and perhaps the damage won’t be so bad that they can’t be cooled down again and given another shot at revival. But that’s your decision, and your risk. I’ve done what I can — I’ve argued our case to the best of my abilities. I hoped you’d see sense — see that there’s no option but to permit us to continue alone. But you haven’t, and I’m sorry.’

When he was done, Vasin turned to her little assembly. ‘An idle threat?’

‘Not given her history,’ Eunice said.

‘Then we can assume those sleepers really are being allowed to thaw?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do we still retain control of the mirrors?’

‘Ditto.’

‘And her efforts to lock us out?’

‘Continuing, but as yet unsuccessful. They’ve put up a good fight, but I know the control architecture of those mirrors better than they do, and I had a head start.’

Vasin nodded solemnly. ‘Then we’ll put that control to the test. Depriving them of power hasn’t been persuasive. I want you to swing the beams back onto Zanzibar, but not directed at the power grids this time. Concentrate the heat on anything that might be vulnerable.’

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